Ignoring Alric for now, Hirrus walked back around the front of the little shop. He wanted to go in and thank the shop owner for her help, but he wasn’t sure what it would mean in the long term. Being friendly with her in front of the adventurer following him might be a problem if he saw a chance to turn his coat and betray Hirrus. Perhaps that was his plan. To curry favor with the guild he had been eager enough to join he’d submitted to a beating.

Lacking the social grace to be tactful, the best option seemed to be to ask outright and try to gauge if the kid was lying to his face.

“Why are you following me?” Hirrus asked.

Alric smirked, an emotion Hirrus saw frequently on the faces of adventurers. “You want the good answer or the real one?”

“Both,” Hirrus said in a gruff tone. “If you don’t mind.”

“The good answer is that this is some sweet-ass gear. I’m a big fan of huge upgrades. Bonus that they’re a big upgrade, ya know? If you’re going after Last of the Strong, you’re going to be shucking some big oysters soon, and if I can get some of those pieces, I’ll be set for life.”

“And the real answer?”

Alric looked away, towards the nearest city wall. “My first week here, I didn’t last the day before someone took me out just for the pocket change I spawned in with.” He grimaced at the memory. “The next two weeks didn’t go that much better. Every adventurer in this city would sell me to Satan for one corn chip. I’m just trying to have a good time here.”

“That doesn’t answer why you’re following me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m getting to that,” Alric said. He paced a few steps, as if they would help him think. “People are doing their damndest to make it Prison Rules around here. You either get hazed to death every time you log in, or you have to be someone’s bitch for protection. Last of the Strong are profiting from that structure. Seeing two of their goons getting their comeuppance for that was the most fun I’ve had in this game so far.” He reached over to clap Hirrus on the shoulder, and then let his hand fall away, as if thinking better of it. “I can see it. You’re gonna touch the untouchable. Those assholes are gonna get what they deserve, and I would give anything to be there for it.”

“You don’t even know what they did to me.”

“I bet it was pretty bad,” Alric said with another of those smirks. “What did they do? Kill your family? Burn down your house? Jaywalk in your town and not show up to their court date?”

“The first two,” Hirrus said. “I suppose the third as well. They unleashed monsters upon Yenon that destroyed the town and killed everyone. My wife died right in front of me. The town burned to the ground.”

“Shit,” Alric said, “that’s rough buddy. Now I feel like an ass for guessing it.”

Hirrus felt his awareness drift to the transformation ability. It was still greyed out, but he feared what it meant. He didn’t want to say anything, but that felt dishonest. The adventurer had been forthcoming enough with him.

“There may be a further complication. The beasts they unleashed on the town were strange reptilian humanoids. One of them bit me. I have an unusual transformation ability-”

“Oh shit,” Alric blurted out, interrupting, “like a werewolf or something?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s like… A wolfman. A humanoid with wolf features, and if it bites you, you become one.”

“I’m unsure if that’s how it works,” Hirrus said.

But something tugged at his memory.

The monster that attacked him was wearing the armor of one of his fellow guards and was holding a well-used weapon. Had the equipment been looted? Or had the creature been wearing it the entire time? “Hm. But it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.”

“So you might be some kind of dragon-based werewolf? That sounds badass.”

Hirrus didn’t feel badass. “Isn’t that off putting, though? I might become a feral destructive force and destroy half of Inoha.”

“Sounds like Last of the Strong bit off more than they could chew. They fucked up big time if the guard bringing them to justice is juiced up on their own atrocity.”

“Hm.” Hirrus was struck by the thought that Alric had a serious lack of a self-preservation instinct. Then again, that had long since been a trait associated with adventurers. “Regardless, I still need to find them. The only lead I have is that I need to locate Juri Thorpe.”

“Oh, I can help with that,” Alric said excitedly, clapping his hands together. “There’s a directory online of the player housing. Because it’s overseen by the city and not by the guild itself, it doesn’t have the same bullshit around protecting its location.”

“Then why would she even have a house? She could just be living with the guild.”

“She had to have worked her way up to that point first, right?” Alric said. “Like, um, she needed somewhere to hang her hat before getting there. And if she’s connected to the recruiter riffraff, she needs a place where they can find her without tracing all the way back to the guild.”

“Hm.” Hirrus grumbled, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “Seems like a security oversight.”

“Only if she talks,” Alric said with a shrug. “You also have to consider that the security is mostly intended to stop beggars and thieves. Last of the Strong is a raiding guild. It would be a bonehead move to outright attack them. Unless, of course, they’re some kind of dragon werewolf monster.”

Without waiting for further conversation, Alric took the lead. He moved with strange purpose, as if he knew exactly where he was going. Hirrus followed. It seemed like the smartest thing he could do.

Unless, of course, Alric was still going to betray him. But nothing about his story had set off Hirrus’ distrust. The adventurers who roamed this world were terrible to every villager. It would only make sense that they were terrible to each other as well.

Hirrus decided to trust the adventurer. For now.

It only took a minute for them to arrive at a strange-looking waymarker in the middle of an intersection. Alric stepped up to it and started gesturing vaguely in the air.

“Juri… Juri… Juri…” Alric muttered before turning to Hirrus. “You’ll have to give me a minute. These are sorted by address, not by character name. And there’s no fucking search function. Like, what is this, nineteen-ninety-five?”

Hirrus couldn’t hide a frown. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Alric said. He gestured dismissively with his free hand, the other still flicking at the empty air in front of his face. “I’m just thinking out loud.”

Hirrus fell silent, and watched Alric manipulating the space between himself and the stone waymarker. The marker was a narrow pyramid of grey-blue stone, about ten feet tall, with the square base roughly two feet wide on each side. It was marked with text, but to Hirrus' eyes, it was gibberish. Not even a foreign language or a random assortment of letters, but each character on the face of the marker was just slightly off. Letters that looked like letters, but missing pieces or with extras obscuring their true meaning.

The whole thing was a confusing mess.

If Alric believed it had the answers he was seeking, he could entertain this for a moment.

It took several moments for Alric to find whatever it was he was seeking. Halfway through he located someone named “Juri Capo” and stopped looking until Hirrus corrected him.

“The Rogue’s Village,” Alric said with a low whistle of appreciation. “Swanky. She might be your first stop, but she’s pretty close to the top of the cultural heap in these parts if she managed to muscle her way into housing up there.”

“Just tell me where to find her,” Hirrus said with a frustrated sigh.

“Ah, eager to turn her into a heap of cultural parts, then.” Alric laughed, despite having failed to say anything that could be described as a joke. “The west end of the Rogue’s Village, just north of the river. Plot number 1660. I can mark it on my map and take you right there.”

Hirrus tilted his head in appreciation. “Helpful.”

“Shit, if you’re letting me follow behind and then tossing me cast-off gear, that’s worth the price of my time.” Alric gave Hirrus a big stupid grin. “And then if you’re letting me watch you break historical precedent when it comes to a big guild facing consequences for their actions, I only wish I were streaming this for posterity.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Hirrus said, “but if you’re helping, then help.” He gestured northward, towards the inner city wall. “Lead the way.”

The Rogue’s Village was inside the inner city wall. Passing through it marked a dramatic change in their surroundings. The outer areas were relatively simple collections of buildings, like Yenon, but scaled up and multiplied. Here was like walking into an entirely separate culture. The buildings were no longer made from grey brick and wood, but constructed of much larger slabs of stone, braced with wood along the seams, giving them a very sturdy look.

Even the people he saw about took a dramatic change as well. The guards still wore heavy plate, but they now wore colorful tabards over it, and carried long decorative halberds bearing the flag of the Kingdom of Hari. Normal folk in the streets were no longer ordinary workers and craftsmen, but instead seemed to be messengers in fine clothes.

Even the adventurers he saw seemed to be more reliably dressed in matching equipment instead of a mismatched patchwork set.

“Just through here,” Alric said, pushing onward heedless of the sudden change, as if it were expected. “And then you can do your thing.”

Hirrus wondered, briefly, if he was perhaps being led into a trap. It was a possibility.

But if it wasn’t, this was his best lead yet.

Hirrus pushed forward, determined. If Last of the Strong had put Alric in his path to lead him into a trap, he was ready. He would smash his way through it, and hope that the snare had enough of a rope for him to follow back to the would-be trapper.

And if Alric wasn’t a pawn, Hirrus would find the answer he craved.